BirdsEye comes to Android smartphones

Launching with the same features that made BirdsEye a hit on the iPhone, BirdsEye for Android is available as a free download with various subscription options. I know a lot of Android users have been looking forward to this release for years now, so its exciting to finally see it available.

If you aren’t familiar with it, BirdsEye is an awesome tool for birders planning a birding trip, doing some intense county birding, or doing a big year. The real power of BirdsEye lies in the fact that it can be personalized to show a short list of target birds likely to be of interest based on your life list. You can track your list for any state/province, country or even county for life or the current year.

If you are traveling in a new area, BirdsEye can give you some context, helping you narrow down the list of likely species to what is actually in the area. Is that a Carolina or Black-capped Chickadee? Migration timing of dowitchers? Many tricky identifications are quite simple if you can rule out one of the options by geography or time of year. BirdsEye is also the killer tool when birding in a completely new area. Narrow down a list of 50 hummingbird species at the ecolodge you are visiting to just the 10 reported there, or use BirdsEye to show you just the couple of manakins you might find nearby and all of a sudden that quick glance at a bird turns out to be enough to make the ID.

Central Park barcharts

Bee-eaters in Uganda

Manakins in Tikal, Guatemala

Tanagers in Tikal, Guatemala

Of course the real reason most people are using BirdsEye is to see the recent sightings of species they are interested in. As a free download, BirdsEye for Android shows you the 100 most common species in your area, or at any location in the world. With a regional or world subscription, you can get quick access to sightings for up to 10,300+ species, providing that someone has reported it to eBird. Tapping on any species zooms out to show the species range, or zooms in to show the closest sightings to you, depending on the birds distribution. Each of the pins can then be tapped for more information, and additional species reported at that same location, but its not possible to pull up the eBird checklists relating to each sighting.

Long-tailed Manakin

Lesser Coucal

Lesser Rhea

Nanday Parakeet

BirdsEye also features some gorgeous photography from a long list of birders and photographers, and while not all are the greatest quality, the full app does offer images for over 5,000 species. You can actually score a free subscription in the app by submitting a high quality photo of a bird for the app, as well as text or audio recordings.